(July 22, 2011) Italian automaker Fiat is now the majority owner of Chrysler Group — with a 53.5 percent stake — as both the U.S. and Canadian governments exited the automaker.

The U.S. Treasury completed the sale of its 6 percent stake in Chrysler to Fiat for $500 million. Fiat also acquired a 1.5 percent stake from the Canadian government for $125 million, Chrysler said in a filing Thursday.

Fiat also paid $75 million for the governments’ right to buy the remaining stake held by the UAW's retiree health-care trust, of which $15 million goes to Canada.

"With today’s closing, the U.S. government has exited its investment in Chrysler at least six years earlier than expected,” Timothy Massad, the Treasury Department’s acting assistant secretary for financial stability, said in a separate statement. Loans to Chrysler were set to mature in 2017.

Fiat and Chrysler will have a single management structure soon, Sergio Marchionne, CEO of both companies, said last week.

Marchionne, 59, is working on management changes as he moves to integrate the two companies. He plans to merge the carmakers to reduce costs and achieve a target of more than 100 billion euros ($140 billion) in combined revenue by 2014. The executive said in May that the timing of a merger hasn’t been decided, adding that a combination isn’t likely this year.

The U.S. exit ends a 30-month involvement of two administrations in saving the company from collapse, beginning with the Bush administration's decision to bail out Chrysler with $4 billion in December 2008.

The deal means taxpayers have booked a $1.3 billion loss on the bailout. Chrysler received $12.5 billion in total, including $8.5 billion advanced by the Obama administration. The government had previously recovered about $10.6 billion.

Sources: Bloomberg, The Detroit News, The Detroit Free Press